“The entire dungeon is resetting? Huh… Okay, then.” I tilted my head. “I guess that’s why nothing respawned inside. Everything respawns all at once after you clear it.”

I hummed before frowning.

“Wait, I left some stuff inside, though! One of the feathers and… and that one coin I used against the second boss! Are they lost forever now?” I stared at the blurry dungeon, feeling like I’d dodged the bullet. “Well, good thing I picked up my stuff before I went to loot the chest, huh?”

JamieWasTaken3: maybe that stuff is still there

JamieWasTaken3: after it resets

Jeofffff: this is so lame that you can’t farm the dungeon

I shrugged.

“Hey, I’m good. I spent a whole week inside that place. It’s probably time to move on.”

In fact, I’d spent so long in there that it now felt weird that I couldn’t go back there. Like I’d been evicted out of my house or something. This world had really screwed with how I saw things, huh?

I clapped my hands and turned away from the ticking reset clock.

“Anyway! Dungeon complete! We did it, chat! I’m a pro dungeoneer now!” I glanced at the fallen tree covered in dried ink, then I glanced at the untouched forest on the other side and went silent.

“...So… what now? I’ve been going super hard to try and finish that dungeon, but… Uh…” I scratched my head awkwardly. “Now, I’m a bit lost.”

Jeofffff: wait for the reset and then speedrun it

GeorgeDoshington: go beat the spaceship now!

JamieWasTaken3: look for more dungeons? idk

KaiEbikoOfficial: you could take another break

Irid123: explore more of the world

I hummed with a frown.

There were some good suggestions. I didn’t know about speedrunning or trying to take on the killer robot in the spaceship dungeon again, but…

“I mean, I have food now, so I don’t need to worry about starving at least. I might just take my time exploring the world some more. Who knows? Maybe there are some people still around,” I mused.

I didn’t really believe it, but a girl could hope.

“Well, no need to make a decision right this moment. I can take a day or two to chill out again.”

I shrugged, adjusted my backpack, and began walking to my favorite life ooze lake spot.

GonguuH: you could work on your shelter building quest

GeorgeDoshington: wait you can do the limit break now

“Right, there was that quest…” I grimaced. “Limit Break, huh? I do have like a trillion skill points, so I could easily max Streamer right now…”

I briefly opened up the ‘Limit Break’ info window to check the requirements again. One tier three achievement – I had three of those now – and a fully upgraded racial skill.

“...Later. I still don’t like the sound of it.”

GeorgeDoshington: cmon do it

GeorgeDoshington: you need to become the time hero, right?

“We still don’t know that!” I argued. “Maybe I can get back home without getting traumatized and going back in time! Heck, we don’t even know for sure that that’s what these incausal rifts do…” I paused and pursed my lips. “Hold on. If these incausal rifts really will bring me back in time, what the heck is going to happen to the stream? Will you all be coming with me?”

GonguuH: probably

JamieWasTaken3: the time is all fucked up already anyway

I grunted. “Or I’ll be streaming to medieval knights instead of you lot. That would be cool,” I mused as I finally made it back to the ooze lake.

The first tree had grown enough to match my height already. The other trees I’d planted had also began to sprout tiny saplings. The plant growth here really was crazy accelerated. It was a wonder that the world wasn’t covered in even more plantlife than it already was.

I stopped near the first tree and frowned. “So, should I keep exploring…? Or build a house…? Or…”

I honestly wasn’t sure.

On one hand, exploring more of this world would help me get closer to finding my way back home, but on the other hand, having an actual base of operations with a bed and whatnot would be a godsend. I was tired of sleeping on grass or dungeon floors and I didn’t believe I would find my way back home very quickly.

Jeofffff: poll it?

I hummed.

“You know what? Yes. I’m going to make a huge poll and keep it running overnight this time. I’m not in a rush anymore and I wanna see what you guys decide!” I declared and began setting up the poll.

GeorgeDoshington: oh hell yeah

GeorgeDoshington: im gonna get all my sisters to vote

I snorted.

“How many sisters do you have, George?”

GeorgeDoshington: 3

Jeofffff: yo and spend your skill points before going to sleep!

I hummed and then rubbed my eyes tiredly.

“That’s a lot of sisters… Damn, fighting two bosses back to back was really tiring! It’s not that late yet, but I might just go to sleep right away!”

Jeofffff: …

I smirked.

“Oh and, chat! Look at all these juicy skill points! Thirty-five now! That’s crazy! Just imagine all the cool skill upgrades I’ll be able to get… tomorrow when I wake up!”

Jeofffff: this is cruel and unusual punishment

“I could fully upgrade Streamer! Or I could finally switch my build to the soulbound item one Jeoff suggested! Or maybe something completely different! So many options… for tomorrow morning!”

JamieWasTaken3: stoppp hes alreayd deaaad lmao

Jeofffff: I’m going on a strike

I giggled and waved my hand in front of myself.

“Sorry, sorry. Just kidding… Well, not about the being tired part. I am exhausted after that stupid duplicating shark fight, but I still have enough energy to at least take a look at my skills and whatnot.”

Jeofffff: omfg thank you

GeorgeDoshington: wtf its a christmas miracle

“Well, let’s see…” I murmured as I sat down next to the tree.

Jeofffff: upgrade streamerrrr

I tsked. “You just really want me to unlock the Limit Break so you can pressure me into doing it at any time, huh?”

Jeofffff: no its because it unlocks tier 2

I blinked and then smacked my head.

“Oh, yeah! I completely forgot about that! I should probably do that before I start spending all my points, huh?”

I sighed at the prospect. I was just kind of concerned about unlocking the Limit Break at all…

Well, a new tier of skills could only be a good thing, right?

Purchase the [Streamer] skill upgrade [Admin rights] for 3 skill points?

Y/N

‘Admin rights’ skill upgrade unlocked!

Purchase the [Streamer] skill upgrade [Stream history] for 3 skill points?

Y/N

‘Stream history’ skill upgrade unlocked!

Congratulations! You have unlocked the next tier of human skills and upgrades!

Congratulations! You have unlocked Limit break #1 - Trials of courage!

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Note: DO NOT attempt this until you are certain that you are ready.

I stared at the two congratulations windows that popped up the moment I bought the last two upgrades, feeling even more reluctant about the idea of doing the Limit Break.

“Look at this, chat… The system just keeps warning me.” I shook my head. “Yeah, don’t worry, Mr. System. I’m not about to throw myself into it right away.”

GeorgeDoshington: damn

Jeofffff: yeah you first gotta get all the new skills and upgrade them

Jeofffff: and then you do the limit break

I side-eyed the chat, but didn’t deign to respond.

“Anyway! Tier two skills! Let’s see what we have! Whoa, that’s a lot of stuff… Aaaand it’s expensive as heck. Dammit. And I thought I had a ton of skill points.”

I still only had tier one phoenix skills available, but the tier two of human skills was unlocked now.

Tier 1:

Persistence (OWNED)

Soulbound item (2SP)

Craftsman (OWNED)

Appraisal (EQUIPPED)

Hunter’s eye (3SP)

Conqueror (5SP)

Tier 2:

Analysis (6SP)

Mapmaker (7SP)

Armsmaster (8SP)

Rend (9SP)

Soul strike (10SP)

Raider’s fury (12SP)

KaiEbikoOfficial: not even gonna check out your juicy new admin rights?

“Oh yeah, you’re right!” I brightened up. “I can finally ban George! It’s a glorious day today, chat!”

GeorgeDoshington: hey hol up

JamieWasTaken3: you already banned him before tho

GeorgeDoshington: i didnt agree to this

“No, that was just kicking him out of the group chat, Jamie,” I corrected. “Let’s see… Is there some kind of extra menu…? Oh, here we go!”

Admin board:

Roles

Ban viewer

Mute viewer

Time out viewer

Run ads

“...Huh. I can run ads, apparently.” I stopped and frowned. “Why would I even do that? Not like I can use the money in any way… What kind of ads would they even be?”

JamieWasTaken3: call now and get this exclusive turtle plushie I found ina dungeon

I huffed a laugh before gasping in an overly exaggerated manner.

“How dare you, Jamie! I would never sell Mr. Gargles!”

Jeofffff: maybe running ads gives skill points?

“Eh, you think so? That would be really lame, wouldn’t it? I could just have ads running all day long to farm skill points…” I scoffed in disgust. “I’m not that kind of streamer!”

Jeofffff: hey I’m just sayin

“Yeah, sure… Anyway, what about the roles? Is there more than just moderator roles?”

I mentally opened up the sub-menu and then stopped as my eyes narrowed once I looked past all the options and focused on who had these roles assigned already.

The first registered role was ‘Streamer’ and the only user with that role was ‘AotoNana’, which was fine, but…

“...Chat, am I seeing this right? Is my own streamer role banning me from posting messages in chat?”

GeorgeDoshington: lmfao

KaiEbikoOfficial: who the heck set this up?

“I don’t know, but it’s pretty suspicious…” I mumbled before I switched on the chatting rights for that role and then immediately tested it out. I didn’t have a keyboard, but I could still mentally type the message.

AotoNana: bow down to me mortals

The message appeared in the main chat, but got anchored at the bottom similar to Ebiko’s messages.

“Well, that’s cool.” I hummed. “I guess if I ever get stuck underwater again, I can still talk to you guys with this.”

GeorgeDoshington: *bows down*

GeorgeDoshington: pls no ban

I sniffed.

“Fine then, peasant! I shall spare you a ban for now!” I declared in the haughtiest tone I could manage.

Then I looked at the other registered role besides the default one and my eyes narrowed.

It was called ‘Moderator’ and just as expected, Ebiko had this role. But what caught my eye was the other person with the role.

“Who’s… ‘HellEnna’?” I mumbled. “Why are they a mod?”

KaiEbikoOfficial: someone you know?

“I don’t know…?” I frowned. “And speaking of which, why were you a mod by default, Ebi?”

KaiEbikoOfficial: maybe because you made me a mod before?

“Hmm… Maybe, but I didn’t mod this HellEnna, so…”

Something felt suspicious about this whole thing.

GeorgeDoshington: its the phoenix

GeorgeDoshington: gottem

I grunted.

“You think the phoenix made themselves a mod? But they had to have realized that I would see it once I got the upgrade.”

GeorgeDoshington: he fucked up

I sighed.

“I don’t suppose HellEnna is in the chat, right now…?”

I waited a few moments, watching the chat for any messages by that username anchored at the bottom, but none appeared.

“I guess not. Well, not much I can do about it, I guess…” I grumbled. “Whatever! Let’s move on.”

I mentally tapped into the other upgrade I’d just gotten, Stream history. It opened a massive system window with a view of the grass in front of me, a split second before the view was blocked by a massive system window with grass in front of me, which was then immediately blocked off by a massive system window–

I looked to the side for a moment to break the infinite recursion before looking back and quickly finding a pause button.

“Okay, let’s see…”

There were a lot of your typical video player controls from pausing, to rewinding, to speeding up, and I could also manually drag the marker around the timeline to skip back and forth.

In addition to that, there were also several other features, such as bookmarks, and the ability to give names to sections of time. Now that would probably come in very handy if I ever needed to go over something I’d learned in the past.

“This is really cool, chat… But I guess you guys had access to this all along, huh?”

Jeofffff: not the bookmarks

GeorgeDoshington: now you can watch you fail against that robot lol

My eye twitched, but against my better judgment, I decided to drag the marker all the way back to the beginning and then nudged it forward until it got to the moment where I first saw the spaceship. I lay down on the grass and watched the system window hovering above me playing everything back.

RetconRanger: nana…?

RetconRanger: you don’t need to do this

“I kinda want to, though. You know, it’s like… looking back and marveling at how far I’ve come and stuff,” I mumbled as my eyes narrowed at the killer robot in the distance who hadn’t woken up yet.

I was completely silent as everything played out just like I’d remembered it. Me running away from it, hiding in the debris, looting the chest, burning myself, and then running out and facing the robot.

Even now, a mere week later, I could pick out a dozen of mistakes I’d made back then. From the way I ran, to the way I held the sword, to how I reacted in the first place.

Was I strong enough to take on that robot now? Surely not, right…?

“...Well! That was interesting and traumatizing!” I cheerily exclaimed as I closed the system window. “Now let’s look at all the cool new tier two skills I unlocked!”

There were six of them in total, so even if I were to buy them all, I would only be able to equip half of them at a time. I just had to figure out which ones of them would be most worth it.

I opened up the description of the cheapest one and immediately narrowed my eyes.

Analysis:

[MERGED] with Appraisal and Hunter's eye. Has no other effects.

Upgrade: Assess (1SP)

Upgrade: Inspiration (3SP)

Upgrade: Hunter’s eye (3SP)

Upgrade: Efficient hunter (5SP)

Upgrade: Psychometry (9SP)

“What the… ‘Merged’? Wait, hold on! These upgrades are familiar…”

I mentally asked the system to explain what the [MERGED] keyword meant.

[MERGED] - This skill is connected to another skill or skills, removing them from the skill menu, and gaining them and their upgrades as its own upgrades. The skill may also have some brand new upgrades of its own.

“That’s… Huh. Okay! So, that’s the solution to the lack of skill slots? You just… mash skills together or upgrade them?”

Jeofffff: oh shiiiit this is nice

KaiEbikoOfficial: oh that sounds useful!

“Yeah, this is nice! I’ve been ignoring Hunter’s eye, since it didn’t seem that good, but if I can merge it with Appraisal… Ugh, but it’s expensive! Analysis alone costs six points! Let’s see the other skills first…”

Most of the skills were actually pretty straightforward and reasonable. Mapmaker literally gave me a minimap; Armsmaster was an upgrade to Craftsman that made me better with weapons I made myself; Soul Strike was an upgrade to Soulbound Item that also apparently allowed me to whack people’s souls; and Raider’s Fury merged Conqueror with Persistence and doubled their effects.

And then there was Rend.

Rend:

Use a moderate amount of Intra to momentarily shock the target's mind.

Upgrade: Brain Fog (4SP)

Upgrade: Mind Shield (5SP)

Upgrade: Mindbreaker (8SP)

Brain fog - Cause sustained disorientation for a longer period of time instead of a momentary shock.

Mind shield - Use Intra to protect your own mind from basic mental attacks.

Mind breaker - Use even more Intra to permanently damage someone's mind.

“...Chat, why are there psychic attacks in the human skill list? That doesn’t feel right.”

It also felt quite disturbing. Especially the last upgrade. Sure, it would give me a way to use Intra offensively, but… Well, if I ever met actual people in this world, I didn’t want to give them permanent brain damage!

GeorgeDoshington: never heard of internet trolls? lol

I snorted. “Ah, of course. You’re right George. I do, in fact, get brain damage just by talking to you.”

GeorgeDoshington: hey wtf im cool

Jeofffff: thats so good

Jeofffff: mind shield might save your life one day

“Uh huh… Hmm, I mean… I suppose you're right, Jeoff.” I grimaced. “Actually, there wasn’t anything with mind attacks in the water park dungeon, but I guess Mind Shield is the kind of thing you don’t need at all until you suddenly really need it…”

I hadn’t even thought of the possibility of mental attacks, but now that it had been presented to me… Ugh, should I get it just on the off chance that something was going to attack my mind? Getting permanent brain damage didn’t exactly sound fun.

Would something in the Limit break use psychic attacks on me? Was that what the warning was about?

Jeofffff: other than that armsmaster and soulbound item is the perfect combo

I hummed and reopened Armsmaster.

Armsmaster:

[MERGED] with Craftsman.

Instinctively use equipment created by yourself.

Upgrade: Empower (3SP)

Upgrade: Berserker (4SP)

Upgrade: Ultimate Fusion (15SP)

Berserker - Temporarily infuse Ether into your weapons to make them stronger in a fight.

Ultimate Fusion - Lifts the cap on fused item rarity. You can use a small amount of Intra to give your fused item an official name.

“You mean Ultimate Fusion combined with–”

Blacksmith - You can now use Craftsman’s Fusion sub-skill on soulbound items an infinite amount of times.

“–Blacksmith, right? Yeah, I can see that… I could just keep cramming more and more items into one to make the ultimate set of gear. Yeah… Yeah! I like that, actually! It would also mean that I could make all that gear and then switch to other skills, right?”

The more I thought about it, the more I liked that route. I already had a bunch of miscellaneous items from the dungeon and they would only keep piling up. Sure, sometimes I used several different weapons in a single fight, but a lot of them were bound to just start gathering dust in my backpack.

“Okay then! Let’s see. If I were to buy just Armsmaster, Ultimate Fusion, Soulbound Item, and Blacksmith, it would cost me…” I whined in defeat. “Thirty skill points. And I have only twenty-nine left… Come on!”

JamieWasTaken3: time to do pushups lol

I huffed in annoyance.

“I guess… I mean, yeah. I guess it shouldn’t be that hard to get one more point. I’m pretty close with the squats and push-ups, but still!” I grumbled. “Well, whatever. Craftsman is still on cooldown till tomorrow anyway. I’ll just do some pushups and squats till I’m tired today and then try to finish those two stupid achievements in the morning.”

And then, it would be time to pivot and change builds.

Goodbye, healing fire tank build. You’d served me well.

Hello, ultimate gear Armsmaster build!